The knowledge that many of the people we are helping hate Jews and Christians takes away from the compassion I feel for that segment of disaster victims, but it in no way alters the fact that the right thing to do (and the Judeo-Christian thing) is to go all-out to help even these victims. If there is an educational silver lining, so much the better, but anyone who thinks that helping Muslims is going to change many Muslim minds is likely to be disappointed. What they need is a stick, in the form of a big fat bill, to be paid off in the currency they have recieved: "Stop murdering people of other religions!"
I agree. Too optimistic -- though, to be fair, Ralph Peters is very modest in his predictions. If we're helping because we're the only people who can do it right, great. If we're hoping the Muslim fundies will suddenly start liking us, we should forget about it. To paraphrase Machiavelli, it's better to be feared than loved. I don't mean we should act like scum when we're helping (in Iraq, building some love may actually work) but that we will defeat Islamic extremism only through force, judiciously applied.
Commenting by HaloScan
